Another slow start bites the Bulldogs

Red Land’s first-half goal stands and Wilson is eliminated in the District 3-AAA quarterfinals.

By Jerry Reimenschneider

Reading Eagle

Landisville, PA -

In years to come, when he reflects upon a senior season that ended with Saturday’s 1-0 loss to Red Land, standout Wilson keeper Scott Krotee will stop and wonder.

What might the Bulldogs have been had they played their best soccer from the beginning of each match?

“We just didn’t have the emotion from the start (of games),” Krotee said. “We’ve been waking up at halftime. We needed to be ready from the kickoff.”

So it was fitting, if not comforting, for Wilson that its season’s biggest weakness bit it again during Saturday’s District 3-AAA quarterfinal setback.

Minutes before the match’s start, Wilson coach Tim Fick worried aloud that his team seemed flat. His instincts proved accurate.

The 10th-seeded Bulldogs (17-6-2) started in slow motion as the stacked, second-seeded Patriots (19-1-2) attacked from the outset. Just 9:48 into the match, Red Land’s Cameron Steffen sent a hard grounder toward the middle of an open net. Wilson’s Will McCanney rushed toward the goal line to try to kick it away, and got a foot on it, but the ball bounced in to put the Bulldogs in an early hole.

With the lead, the strong wind at its back and Wilson sleepwalking through the match’s early stages, it appeared that a romp might be pending.

“We had to play with more heart and passion,” Fick said, repeating a familiar refrain. “That’s what was lacking.”

But the Bulldogs dodged a few bullets, somehow managing to make it to the break down only a goal despite Red Land’s 6-2 shots and 4-1 corners advantages over the first 40 minutes.

“In the first half, I feel like we just really controlled possession of the game,” said Red Land coach Eric White, whose Patriots will play Manheim Township in a Wednesday semifinal. “After that, they really seemed to pick up their intensity.”

Fick used halftime to appeal to his team’s pride, and it worked. Wilson held the potent Patriots without an official shot in the second half, and played with more fight.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Fick said. “I am proud of how they responded in the second half.”

The Bulldogs outshot Red Land 4-0 after the break, but had few quality chances. White’s staff had scouted Wilson during the Bulldogs’ overtime win at Elizabethtown Thursday, and the Patriots tailored their defense to stop Wilson’s long services into the box.

“They did what they had to do to take us out of our game,” Fick said.

So ended a staccato season for the Bulldogs, who won the Berks I title in a playoff three games before falling to Conrad Weiser in the county finals in yet another match marked by a sluggish start. Wilson then advanced to its third straight 3-AAA quarterfinal.

The season, then, was hardly horrendous.

Yet the inconsistent-intensity theme that marked 2007 will puzzle both Fick and Krotee for some time.

“It’s on everyone individually,” Krotee said. “You have to have the right mindset when you get off the bus, and we didn’t always have it.”

“I don’t know how to explain it, unfortunately,” Fick said. “It was just the personality of this team. It (the passion) showed up in spurts, but at this stage of the season that’s not enough. You have to play the full 80 minutes.”